The longlist for for Britain’s most prestigious literary award, the Man Booker Prize, has been cut down to a shortlist.

We’re surprised to see Nicholas Shakespeare’s Snowleg, Nicola Barker’s Clear and Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell drop out of contention. But Clarke, at least, will hardly be out of pocket: the hardback edition of her novel is currently the third-bestselling book on Amazon.

The six books still in the running for the £50,000 prize are:

Bitter Fruit by Achmat Dangor
The Electric Michelangelo by Sarah Hall
The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
The Master by Colm Tóibín
I’ll Go To Bed At Noon by Gerard Woodward
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

All the shortlisted authors are British apart from Irishman Tóibín and South African Dangor.

The judging panel criticized the general standard of the novels entered by publishers this year. ‘Of the books submitted, I have to say quite a number were not very good,’ said Chris Smith, the panel chairman.